Hi Ewan

Just to let you know, OpenMarket are off to CTIA in Florida in just under two weeks where we’ll be meeting up with clients and partners from around the world. As the unparalleled intercontinental leader in mobile transactions we’d love to meet any your readers who are going to be at the show. If they can’t make it to the stand we throw a rather famous party and we’d love to carry on the conversations there. If they fancy coming to the party just text CTIA to 88600 (in the UK!) and I’ll organize a follow up!

Cheers
Adrian

Nice one Adrian — thanks for writing — I’m sure you’ll all have an excellent time!

There’s an absolutely fascinating argument burgeoning between Steve Largent, President & CEO of CTIA (the American Wireless Association) and mobile industry analyst/commentator, Tomi Ahonen.

Ahonen posted this excellent diatribe laying into the American mobile industry (primarily the operators). Steve wasn’t happy. Not at all. So unhappy was he, that he ended up having to question whether Tomi lives on this planet.

Steve published this response to Tomi’s post and made a convincing argument citing lots of facts, but failed to answer many of Tomi’s key points.

I recognise that much of Tomi’s post was informed opinion. He didn’t cite everything — neither do I when I’m delivering an opinion-based rant. But to assume — as I think Steve does — that Tomi doesn’t know his stuff, is patently inaccurate.

I think Steve really didn’t enjoy comments such as this one from Tomi:

[Addressing the American wireless operators] What the h*ll are you doing charging for incoming SMS? That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard? Do you have 100% adoption of SMS? No, I didn’t think so? The USA adoption rate for SMS among US cellphone subscribers is 64%. Why are you not at 100% – the world adoption rate is 78%, why are you only at 64%? Its that idiotic idea to charge for incoming SMS !

I’m with Tomi on this one. Charging for incoming SMS is ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. This point is thoroughly deserving of a perspective Steve. Is it the CTIA’s policy to support charging for incoming text messages? Or are you just looking the other way on that one?

What about the archaic medieval torture method of charging for State-to-State ‘roaming’? That’s right, Tomi got stuck in there too:

So while we’re on the [subject of] roaming. What is this I hear that you still punish American domestic citizens for making ‘long distance’ calls within the country? The roaming charges for national calls? Come on! Its another caveman era concept. Its been abandoned in almost all countries already. Why do you insist on this punitive practise? The big four networks have near-perfectly national footprints, you really have to stop these types of archaic medieval torture methods.

Steve doesn’t counter this one directly. Understandably.

I’d like to see a Q&A response between Steve and Tomi. For instance, Steve, is this assertion from Tomi inaccurate?

You know fully well, you make profits on cellular calls across the country, the distance is totally irrelevant to your pricing today as you have your fiber-optic backbones long since deployed and your cross-country calls go on the IP packet network anyway. If its on your network, its a profitable call. You have no basis for charging more for long distance or ‘roaming’ except that its a nasty habit you got into, and you think you can get away with it. The roaming is pure greedy profit that has no place in the market in the 21st century, because your customers have a choice.

I do have to wonder why Steve didn’t answer this point directly.

And what really got up Steve’s nose? Perhaps this final paragraph…

I literally ‘wrote the book’ on modern mobile operator (carrier) marketing, customer care and loyalty. That book is referenced in several dozen books by other authors. I also created the Oxford University course about this topic, and have run seminars and workshops about carrier marketing on all six inhabited continents. I have advised carriers internationally on marketing matters for more than 15 years. I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that US based carriers are the dinosaurs, the obsolete cavemen, and their actions are obsolete and they must change or be killed off. Their conduct is appaling. They are a disgrace to the industry. I urge them to change now, and I advise American consumers to revolt, to write to their congressmen and demand change. It is time we brought those complacent, conceited, arrogant, bloated and colluding carriers to the 21st century. Its time to wake up.

The American wireless industry is being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era though, as I’ve documented here on Mobile Industry Review over the years. Steve from the CTIA lists out some useful stats to demonstrate this. Did you know, for example, that there are 132.2 million 3G subscribers in America? (More than France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK combined).

I wonder what Tomi will respond with? I’d like to get both of these guys in a room and film it, I really would.

(Got this first via Phoneboy‘s tweet)

As sponsor, we’ll put your logo and 30 second message in front of each of the videos we publish and we’ll sit down with you and create a 10-minute interview with one of your company representatives as well.

Total cost? £10,000 or about $14,000. If that (or some of that) is within your gift, drop me a note: I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

You can do it online. And it’s not that painful. My authorisation was granted immediately. It looks to me to be an online carbon copy of those visa-waiver forms you have to complete in the air — or more annoyingly on the ground before you land.

The details you need are on CNN’s Business Traveller page here.

The US Government’s registration/authorisation site is here.

Joy.

Our technical contributor, Dan Lane, anchors the show from his office in London while everyone else was out gallivanting across the globe.

Watch out for:
- Ben Smith live from sticky Beijing
- CTIA interviews with an array of companies including Sonicboom, Trutap, GeoSpot, DeviceAnywhere and Nokia

Topics discussed:
1) Ben’s in Beijing (00:46)
2) CTIA (05:40)
a) ShowStoppers Event Tuesday Evening, CTIA (06:09)
b) DeviceAnywhere: iPhone 3G now available (06:22) : Leila Modarres, Director of Marketing, DeviceAnywhere (06:33)
c) Cascada Mobile (07:46) : Alan Lysne, CEO of Cascada Mobile (07:50)
d) GeoSpot (12:32) : Joe Chen, Founding CEO of GeoSpot.com (12:36)
e) Quick chat with Carl from Trutap (17:02)
f) Bena Roberts, President of Vicinity Mobile and Owner of GoMoNews.com (17:57)
g) David Danon, CEO of Sonicboom.com (20:27)
h) Jeb of TopMobile20.com checks in! (23:09)
i) Mark, top chap at Nokia North America (23:46)

Across this week we’ll be publishing extended interviews with each of the CEOs and Marketing Executives we interviewed. Standby for that!

So I took a break. The net result, standby for our piece-of-brilliance later this evening.

CTIA September 2008 Coverage Preview from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

I’ll be editing it into easily digestible chunks so do keep your eyes peeled.

First up? A brief visit to the Buzzd/Skyfire party and a coverage preview. Soon!

But we’ve got a veritable riot of stuff for you coming. Here’s a taster:

* Comverse, Comverse, Comverse — yes, three different chaps, three different subjects.
* Wade Vasey, top chap of Movial
* A look at Swype, the new on-screen keyboard interface from the makers of T9
* Exclusive video footage of an upcoming Star Wars game from THQ Wireless (it runs beautifully on iPhone)
* Sean Moshir, CEO of CellTrust talks about securing SMS
* A super overview of Nuance
* Overview of Tier-2 US operator, Cricket Wireless
* Stan of Movius gives us a summary of their services
* I interview a lot of people over at the Smaato party.
* Finally, I head over to the Skyfire/Buzzd party. Tons to see from that.

It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, I’ve been indulging in a spot of holsterwatching. That is, observing the mobile use of the industry itself.

It’s terminally depressing on one hand — and on the other hand, excellent news.

For example, there are Blackberries *everywhere*. Every second handset is a Blackberry. This generally bodes well, but I’m still seeing rubbish handsets being brandished by folk who really should know better.

Take, for instance, the countless executives walking around with Motorola RAZR handsets stuck to their heads. It really shouldn’t be allowed. Unless you work for Motorola — in which case, our group-wide sympathies are with you.

CTIA should be a place of mobile brilliance — a celebration of all things mobile. Push the mobile boundaries. And all that jazz.

There’s absolutely no excuse to be walking about with a Motorola RAZR first edition handset nowadays. No excuse. Wear it on a holster and you really deserve a good slapping.

I’m not keeping it to myself though. Oh no.

I’ve deployed the video camera. I am aiming to bring you a series of examples — live video examples — of ridiculous folk sporting ridiculous handsets. These are people who are formulating wireless policy. I’ve pointed the camera at anything that caught my attention. I haven’t quite managed to get the guy walking about with THREE mobile holsters on his belt yet. Every time I see him, it would look rather conspicuous of I started fumbling for the record switch.

Bluetooth-sodding-headsets are also captured in their full glory. Particularly the chap who was sat having a drink with his friends in the ‘W’ Hotel — The W of all places — wearing his rubbish Jawbone.

Bluetooth headsets are for chauffeurs, Fedex chaps and plumbers. Everyone else? No.

Today was action-packed with meeting-after-meeting along with some impromptu connections with folk.

My modus-operandi, dear reader, is this. I turn up. I smile. I thrust forward my hand to the chap or lady I’m interviewing. I then present them with my somewhat oversized mega-memorable business card — it’s the size of a postcard and contains lots of information about Mobile Industry Review.

Then I check that they’re ok with me filming them. I expected quite a few people to be put off by me sticking a camera in their face, but no. Not once.

I’m looking forward to producing the output. It should make for interesting stuff.

So, to this morning.

Enter Pierre-Emmanuel Struyven, Chief Executive of Streamezzo. They’ve created a common platform (“Rich Media Software Suite”) that makes the developing of good looking, swish media services for mobile. I’ve got some good video of some examples from Pierre-Emanuel.

Next up was Alykhan (“Aly”) Govani of MX Telecom USA. Aly was recently appointed top dog in North America and as such, he was mobbed. Mobbed. We had a 1130am meeting but he was being pulled in five ways at once by a load of folk from all sorts of big companies when I arrived. Understandable. MX have alway been a hot property in the mobile space (they’re a leading provider of mobile aggregator services) — however they’ve clearly decided to up their public game. For years they’ve been terrifically well known amongst the closed circles of men sporting beards of questionnable origin (“Telecommunications Executives”) along with first edition Decon Blue LPs. You know. Uber telecoms geeks. It’s always annoyed me slightly that the wider market hasn’t necessarily known much about MX’s capabilities other than being the people who ‘make-the-text-system-work’.

There’s be a change of focus recently. They’ve pulled their finger out. I suspect it’s the top dudes (everyone in San Francisco seems to call each other ‘dude’) finally relenting on the marketing front. About time!

The net result? MX have a stand right next to Microsoft on the ground floor right by the entrance to the exhibition. So after you dodge the Microsoft groupies trying to persuade you that they CAN write a reliable operating system without having to have 7 goes (Version 7 just might work) – you’ll immediately hit the MX stand. Which is what a lot of folk are doing.

So I arranged to meet with Aly on Friday when it’ll be less busy.

I rocked up to Colibria in good spirits, eager to hear more about what they’re up to with Syniverse. Syniverse provides seamless mobile services for carriers — the concept being that most carriers operate with a heck of a lot of different (and usually incompatible, or annoyingly compatible) technologies and standards. As a consumer, I don’t give a toss. I just want my instant messenger to work, whether I’m in France, Belgium or Boise. Syniverse sort that out.

And speaking of Instant Messaging, Colibria are all over that. Multiple device messaging, multi-point, multi-everything. As Colibria CEO Keith Gibson explained, “The end-user doesn’t care whether the recipient of their message is online at home via MSN, on the bus or the like — they just want the message to get through.”

Colibria’s services, as well as offering the usual instant messaging facilities to mobile users, intelligently routes communications between your platforms as needed. So whilst you might be using IM to talk to someone, your messages could actually be being transmitted to the recipient as text messages — yet you’re able to chat away with your IM client. I haven’t seen this live yet but I’m looking forward to doing so.

I now need to sleep — but I’ve got conversations with the following in-the-can:

Naushad Huda, Textopoly co-founder

Robert Chavez, CEO of DIDMO

Thomas Garland, President, Snaptell

Mike Concannon, SVP Connectivity & Wireless, Qualcomm

Eric Lamarechai, Mobile Distillery

Orang Dialameh, Founder & CEO of iVisit

Paul Savage, Visibility Mobile CEO

Brian Lent, Chairman & CEO of Medio

Dinesh Saparamadu, CEO of hSenid

Nitin Bhandari, CEO of Skyfire

Plus our first look at the all new Blackberry Flip. Ooooh.

Marty Beard, Sybase 365′s President, says:

Today, businesses operate as part of a global economy—so providing our customers with seamless mobile services regardless of geographic location is paramount.

Sybase 365 is the global leader in SMS and with the launch of MMX 365, the company expands its North American leadership in MMS into the global MMS ecosystem.

Key features and benefits of MMX 365 include:

• One point of access to deliver to multiple destinations. MMX 365 ensures multi-media messages reach the desired recipient, regardless of which operator is sending or receiving the message or whether a message originated or is received domestically or internationally.
• Flexible connectivity options. Operators can choose to connect to MMX 365 via a secure IP connection or via GRX.
• A future-proof number resolution infrastructure. Sybase 365 operates one of the most comprehensive phone number resolution databases deployed today, meaning operators can rest assured that all information is up-to-the-minute accurate.
• Several value-added capabilities, including automatic scanning of all in-bound MMS messages for known mobile viruses.

We’re hooked onto more news coming in from Ewan present at CTIA.

Our team is going international tomorrow. That is: Ben Smith flies out to Beijing and James Whatley heads off to the ‘mothership’ (as he calls it — Nokia Central in Helsinki).

Why Nokia decided to hold their get-together during the same week as CTIA, I don’t know. I’d have loved to have gone along and put some viewpoints to the team there.

I had an interesting time at the Nokia event this evening. There was a good turn out and their North American Chief Executive did his best to paint a positive picture of the marketplace in the region. (“We’re launching a phone with Verizon shortly,” “Rogers will take our Ovi services”). Nokia is nowhere in the States and that’s it. Period. Thanks for coming. I filmed his piece so I’ll put it up soon. Make up your own mind from his body language.

At ShowStoppers I bumped into old friends DeviceAnywhere and got some good overview video footage from them. I connected with Cascada’s top chap and was rather impressed to see they’d already created a demo Mobile Industry Review application for us here. I’ve got footage galore.

Then i packed away the camera and headed to the VSC Consulting ‘Ocean’s 30′ meal on the waterfront at Embarcadero. This featured (tellingly, from the event name) 30 of the most influential, talented mobile geniuses on the planet, in one room. A chap from Reliance. A chap from RIM. A chap from Buzzd. A chap from a leading venture capitalist.

Vijay spotted me as I arrived and plugged me into a chap sat opposite me, “This is Omar Hamoui… Omar, meet Ewan,” said Vijay.

“Hi Omar, what is it you do?” I asked politely and … yes, rather stupidly.

“I’m with AdMob,” he says. My eyes light up.

“Big fan, BIG BIG fan,” I tell him.

“What do you do with AdMob, Omar?” Was my follow-up dumb question.

To his credit, Omar took my question with super grace and explained that he was the founder.

Right.

Nice one, Ewan.

I.. er.. I knew this. I just didn’t connect Omar to AdMob *in person*.

I did present him with a really cool Mobile Industry Review flyer though. They’re going down a storm. They’re postcard sized and feature a rather large can’t-miss-it MIR logo on one side and then some site information on the back. There’s also a screengrab from the MIR television Show featuring our very own Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley. I heard lots of tales about Whatley actually. None of them publishable.

I bumped into Raj from Skyfire who — like many — follows the Mr Operator series here on MIR. He was particularly taken with Mr Operator‘s recent discourse and total annihilation of WiMax as a going concern. (I note Intel and other WiMax proponents have yet to supply a response to that piece).

Alex Andronikov (his business card says ‘Chief Mobilizer, CEO’) of MoVoxx took me through his rather extensive SMS marketing business. He’s done it the right way.

“We went straight to Madison Avenue,” he tells me, “That’s where the money is.”

Nice one. They’re delivering brilliant results, using text as the point of contact for their clients. They’ve developed an astonishingly large opted-in profiled base of North American consumers.

I sat down for a moment next to Brad Witteman, COO and Co-Founder of SkyClix. They’ve come up with a rather cool method of querying information via audio. As their site puts it:

SkyClix lets consumers get the information they want, when they want it. Using the ubiquitous mobile phone, consumers can dial #SKY (#759), hold the phone near a speaker and get connected with advertisers, stations and music.

Listening to a track you like on the radio? Dial 759 and you’ll get pushed to a mobile web page with an array of information and options including the ability to bookmark the song in iTunes for later perusal. Love it.

Amit Khanduja is the Executive Vice President of Jump Games. One word for you: Reliance. Yes, Reliance, the massive Indian powerhouse, are the folks behind Jump. Amit’s on the hunt for relevant companies to acquire and do business with. I’m going to see if I can do a profile of Amit himself and find out a lot more about what Jump are doing.

“Moderati licenses, produces and distributes awesome mobile content. We’re responsible for the good stuff on your phone!” — So says their site and I don’t doubt it. I had an all too brief chat with Cindy Lundin Mesaros, SVP Marketing at Moderati. I’ll need to see if we can get Cindy on a special report podcast or the like soon. They’re doing some excellent work in mobile content.

If I can get back to the hotel room early tomorrow night, I’ll get some video up…

It was with some trepidation that I approached the event PR team and asked.

Cheryl Delgreco and Karen Blondell, sitting by the media center sorted me out wih an extra badge. Excellent service. I’m going to need the help.

Now then, time for the Nokia event…

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

Today is an OK day… but it’s gonna be a shocker tomorrow. Back to back meetings every sodding hour. But, you know, that’s why I’m here. I’m just aiming to stay as organised as possible.

I shall be walking the show floor if time permits, camera and video camera in hand. Like an overzealous Japanese tourist. Although I won’t be wearing my rucksack on my front.

I came across this rather neat CTIA local hot-spot guide from Moderati this afternoon. It lists some of the best ‘hidden gems’ in San Francisco. If you’re heading to CTIA this week, it might be of use.

Or if you’re hoping to visit SF shortly, it’s worth saving the URL.

Check it out here. It’s laid out in a flash-based book style format.

Updates from Mobile Industry Review are going to be intermittent over the next few days whilst I meet, film, edit and write-it-up.

Standby.

I’m scheduled to meet a whos-who of mobile there. If you’d like to meet so I can feature you, knock me over a note.

A virtual world for mobile devices, called Cellufun, has established a courthouse, where rule-breakers are indicted by their peers and tried by a jury of other community members. If found guilty of a charge, such as using profanity, users must carry out varying levels of sentences, from being mute for 20 minutes to being banished.

For the duration of punishment, a user’s avatar — a cartoon version of his or her real-life self — is pictured behind bars.

At least one user has been convicted of a crime every day since the Cellufun courthouse opened two weeks ago, said chief executive Arthur Goikhman. Every day, dozens of members are indicted.

"It’s really affected the tone and tenor of the site," he said. "People are much, much, much more careful now."

Fantastic!? I’m going to see if I can meet up with Arthur and the team when I’m at CTIA soon.

If you’re heading to CTIA and you’d like to feature, drop me a note and we’ll sort schedules.

To qualify, you have to have something interesting to say and show the MIR audience.  Special priority goes to the smaller startups.

If you’re PR or marketing for a company heading there, we’re PR friendly so get in touch as soon as you can.

That I am. With nobs on. And with a large HD camera in tow.

We’re going to be doing a lot of wicked coverage from San Francisco this coming September.

Are you coming?

CTIA -The Wireless Association® announced today a Request For Information (RFI) on behalf of its Enhanced Messaging Action Team (EM Team). The RFI is being sent to a wide range of companies with an interest in the enhanced messaging space.

CTIA’s EM Team, comprised of industry representatives, is currently in the process of evaluating solutions to implement EM on wireless phones in the United States. The purpose of this RFI is to understand and evaluate capabilities and interests in EM Product Feature—Group Messaging (GM).

The EM Team is looking for high level solutions and detailed call flow options surrounding the Product and the GM Feature, and is interested in discussion surrounding solution options, feature functionality, customer experience and technical feasibility.

Any company interested in receiving the RFI should contact Kate Kingberger, Director of Wireless Internet Development for CTIA, at kkingberger at ctia.org or 202-736-3892 for more information. Participating companies will be required to respond by June 26, 2008.